A vehicle, such as a car, hosts a turn signal light source, such as a bulb, which is manually activated by a driver of the vehicle, such as when making a turn or switching lanes. When activated, the turn signal light source visually notifies others, such pedestrians and the drivers of other vehicles, that the vehicle may change its direction of travel by, for example, turning onto another road or switching road lanes. However, since the turn signal light source is manually activated by the driver, there are often times when the driver neglects to activate the turn signal light source before changing its direction of travel. This situation can be dangerous, especially on high speed roads, and is often a cause of vehicle accidents or instances of road rage.
Although various technologies exist in order to mitigate the failure of a driver to engage the vehicle's turn signal, these technologies are inadequate for various technical reasons, such as false positives and slow reaction time. For example, some prior attempts to ameliorate this situation have included smart turn signals that stay silent and in the background, but present a warning to the driver if the vehicle is steered outside the bounds of a lane, and turn signal assist programs that generate dashboard messages to remind a driver to use turn signals after repeated failures to do so. These existing technologies still rely on the driver of the vehicle to manually engage the turn signal light source when appropriate.